Magazine ArticlesCredenda|agenda: things to be believed, things to be donehttp://www.credenda.org/index.php/Table/Femina-For-Wives/
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 02:59:57 +0000Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Managementen-gbThe Woman's Touchhttp://www.credenda.org/index.php/Femina-For-Wives/the-womans-touch.html
http://www.credenda.org/index.php/Femina-For-Wives/the-womans-touch.htmlWhen I think of what we call the “woman’s touch,” I immediately see a man living alone in the old west who gets himself a mail-order bride. She takes one look at his disheveled cabin and gets out the broom and bucket and whips the place into shape. The next scene in the movie shows ruffled curtains blowing in the windows, fresh bread coming out of the oven, and a cleaned up cowboy sitting meekly at the table, eating his dinner with newly acquired, civilized manners.

Though we should laugh at the stereotype, there is something powerful to be said for the feminine touch. Not only does the cabin really get remade into something for humans, but the cowboy is remade as well. If he is going to enjoy the company of a real woman, he is going to have to shape up, take a bath, clean up his habits, and stand tall. He’s a new man.

Men want to be made new. They enjoy being the kind of men that a woman will respect and admire. When a culture has the bar too low, and the women are easily im­pressed, too eager for any male companionship of any cali­ber, then the men can get away with slouching around. And they will. But when the culture is characterized by women with high standards, it is a great blessing to the men. They will stand tall to impress a woman like that.

If the above mail-order bride had not been a power­ful force for good, the house would still be a pigsty and the man would still smell to high heaven. But she had a backbone and a standard (and was cute to boot), and the man readily conformed so that he could share her bed and board. This is how it should be, and the men know it. In fact, the men like it that way. It makes life far more inter­esting and gives them purpose and a heritage, someone to defend and provide for.

On the other hand, if the women are willing to com­promise, few men will argue about it. If she will climb into his bed (or someone else’s) without a marriage commit­ment, who’s to complain? He can have all the benefits of marriage with none of the responsibilities. This has a far-reaching effect on our culture: men become more immature, irresponsible, reckless, and selfish; the women try to take up the slack but become restless, competitive, insecure, and discontent.

Imagine for a moment what would happen if women across our country suddenly said something like, “You must be crazy if you think I will sleep with you without a wedding.” Not only would there be a diamond shortage, we would have far fewer miserable, misplaced women with big paychecks and nothing to go home to.

The feminists have successfully marginalized the woman’s “traditional” role, denying its power and impact. In their view, the perky mail-order bride described in the scene above is a brainless idiot who has been hoodwinked into settling for the menial, inferior, even worthless job of housekeeping for a man who has married her just so he can have sex, children, and live-in maid service. And I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that any women who have opted to stay home and raise their children are viewed by the feminists much the same way, even if the marriage was nothing as crude as a “mail-order.” But who is really the wise woman here and who is the fool? Is the hard-working wife really so dumb? Doesn’t she get what she really wants?

The feminists, being above such things themselves, have figured out a much better way to handle male/female relations. Far from being a mail-order bride, the modern feminist is an internet girlfriend. She has moved in with one cowboy after another, is having sex and cleaning up apartments for free for any number of men with whom she has no long-term plans or commitments. He doesn’t have to change his ways or clean up after himself. Why should he? He can find another, younger, maybe more attractive woman if he gets weary of this one. She can expect noth­ing from him.

Now you tell me: Who is the dummy here?

Of course, I have exaggerated to make a point. But still, let’s face it. Women have a powerful impact on men, for good or for ill. Some women are tyrannical and what they need is a husband who will tell them to quiet down for pity’s sake. Women can have a destructive impact on men when they have low standards (like the harlot or strange woman in Proverbs), or when they have high standards for the men but not for themselves (the clamorous woman). The best-case scenario is the wise woman who loves what God loves and isn’t eaten up with discontent. She is at peace with her calling as a woman and is blessed by the happy consequences of her labors.

The world is full of homes in sad need of a woman’s touch: a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-work kind of touch that resounds with God’s creation wisdom and overturns the foolishness of feminism. When we turn away from some of these crazy man-made ideas and embrace God’s design for the family, we will see homes and the men and women in them remade and restored. And there’s no telling the impact on civilization as we know it.

]]>nwilson@brainfog.com (Nancy Wilson)Femina: For WivesFri, 16 Oct 2009 05:46:34 +0000Drop the Luggagehttp://www.credenda.org/index.php/Femina-For-Wives/drop-the-luggage.html
http://www.credenda.org/index.php/Femina-For-Wives/drop-the-luggage.htmlHave you ever been lugging a large, unwieldy piece of lug­gage or a couple of large grocery bags or some other heavy item when someone comes alongside and says, “Here. Let me carry that for you”? It is a great relief to meet with such kindness. And unless we are feeling stupidly proud, we respond with something like, “Oh, thank you, that would be lovely.”

This is what Jesus has said to us in Matthew 11:28–30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

He has issued us an invitation. Are you loaded down? Are you worn out? Come and welcome. Exchange your heavy load for His light one, your difficult burden for His easy one. Take off that yoke that is choking you and ex­change it for His easy one. Learn a lesson from Christ who is a gentle teacher. He is humble and lowly, not at all like those self-generated task-masters that whip at your ankles.

Christ is the destination. He says, “Come to Me.” And when we come, we find rest for our souls. Now how could we possibly neglect such an offer?

Sometimes we get so used to our heavy loads that we forget what we are needlessly carrying until God adds enough to it that our knees buckle with the weight. Then we realize how foolish we have been to be dragging around such a weight when our Savior has been telling us all along to take on His yoke, His easy and light yoke. So we unbur­den our souls and find rest. But if we do not learn from Him, if we continue to be proud and foolish creatures, we start loading up again until we repeat the whole process.

Other times we know full well that we are carrying heavy loads, but we have a stupid pride that keeps us from letting it go. We think we really don’t need help. We can do it. But meanwhile our souls get no rest.

Or we know we are to unload our cares, but we don’t know how. Or we think we have when we really didn’t.

Women can bear tremendous (and unnecessary) loads that they are simply not built to bear. They can become weighed down with many cares. And remember that it was the cares of this world that choked out some of the good seed in the parable. So what are the contents of these heavy loads? What kind of cares do women carry? Cares about finances, health, their marital status, the spiritual state of their children, the state of their marriages, aging parents, their work load, their children’s education, the future, you name it. And let’s be honest here: carrying can be a form of worrying. Jesus told us very frankly that wor­rying won’t change one thing, not even one gray hair.

So how do we go about unloading these burdens? Take a look at 1 Peter 5:6: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

The first step is humility, recognizing that we have been behaving arrogantly like the woman with her arms full of groceries refusing to receive help. Humility acknowl­edges the neediness and receives the offer gratefully. So sit down for a minute and take an inventory of your burdens. Are you loaded down with mountains of cares? What are they? Are you worrying? Tell the Lord you are sorry for dragging these heavy cares around and seek His forgiveness for neglecting His command to come to Him. Then item­ize them all as you cast them off. “Lord, I am coming to You. Here are my worries about my marriage. Here are my cares about my bank account and my health. Here are my burdens of caring for my children and my home and my sick mother. Here is my loneliness and my grief. I let them all go.”

Then thank God for caring for you. Thank Him for the rest. And then stay near and walk close to Him. Get into that yoke that He has fitted for you that is light and easy. He says, “Learn from Me.” Once we have dropped all our burdens and slipped on His yoke, we are fit to be instructed. And we have so much to learn. When we are hunched over with our loads of cares, we are in no shape to learn. We are far too distracted with all our labor and worries and troubles to be taught. But once we have let it all go, we can pay attention to what our Lord is teaching us. We have come near to Him.

No one has a trouble-free life. But those people who handle their troubles with grace are the ones who have drawn near to God and have cast all their cares on Him.

They are learning from Him.

Troubles and cares will either distract us away from Jesus or they will cause us to run to Him. When we unload them and take up the yoke of Christ, we find that we truly have rest for our souls. Jesus wants us to have this rest, He has offered it to us, and we need it. Find out what it is that is hindering you from going to Him, and then go to Him without delay.

]]>nwilson@brainfog.com (Nancy Wilson)Femina: For WivesThu, 15 Oct 2009 04:20:38 +0000Respect Revisitedhttp://www.credenda.org/index.php/Femina-For-Wives/respect-revisited.html
http://www.credenda.org/index.php/Femina-For-Wives/respect-revisited.htmlIt’s easy to think that because I have written on a subject, I should move on to other topics. But since it is still the central command to wives, perhaps I should keep on beating the respect drum. After all, many young women are contemplating marriage, and many young wives are dealing with this for the first time as well. And women who have been married for some years can get distracted away from their central duties. So there is my justification for this redundancy.

I was recently visiting with a group of unmarried, post-college women, and I reminded them how important it is to marry someone for whom they have great respect. It is relatively easy to “fall in love” with any number of men for whom you have no respect at all. Women do it all the time. But how do you recognize respect? What kind of man do you respect? How do you render it? How do you preserve it?

This is one of the big advantages to the courtship model as opposed to recreational dating. In courtship, a woman has an opportunity to get to know a man and determine whether she respects him before she allows herself to become emotionally attached. If she is already deeply in love, it is a bit too late and much more difficult to begin asking the question. If she doesn’t really respect him, she may be tempted to talk herself into believing she does. Then she can end up marrying a man for whom she actually has very little respect.

I don’t think women know much about respect in general. Before I was married, I certainly didn’t. I remember hauling out the dictionary to figure out just what respect meant, and what would be required of me were I to get married. This was very helpful in navigating through the confused courtship waters back in the day when I had never heard of courtship. I could recognize pretty quickly the men for whom I had little respect, but I had never met a man I really respected until I met my future husband. He pretty much defined it for me. I remember thinking, “So that is what I want in a man.”

Respect means admiration, honor, looking up to. It is connected to achievements and abilities. It means treating with courtesy and deference. It is showing consideration for. So, a woman should admire a man, look up to him, and feel confident that he would be easy to follow, help, and (even!) obey were she to marry him. If she feels that he would not be up to leading her, or if she has doubts that he could lead a family in the right direction, she ought not to consider him for a minute.

But knowing about respect is not the same thing as rendering it. After you are married to a man and living in close proximity, it is easy to become careless, casual, and sloppy. You see his failures, his foibles, and his mistakes. You can slip into patterns of disrespect, discourtesy, and disobedience.

So how do we disrespect our husbands? Here are a few techniques: By talking about them disrespectfully, complaining about them, sharing their weaknesses and faults willy-nilly to friends or family members. By talking to them with little regard for their position and authority: interrupting, arguing, downgrading, rolling the eyes, not listening, belittling their views, ordering them about, protecting or mothering them. By treating them with little or no courtesy, failing to express gratitude for the work they do, ignoring their needs or their wishes, being unresponsive or cool.

How does a wife show respect to and for her husband? By thinking right thoughts about him, praying for him, showing gratitude, speaking courteously, praising him to others, contemplating his strengths rather than focusing on his weaknesses, going to him for counsel, forgiving him, showing concern for his needs and wishes, following through when he assigns a task.

The effect of disrespect on a husband is described in Proverbs 12:4 as “rottenness in his bones” which sounds a lot like spiritual bone cancer, slowly destroying him from the inside out. But the respectful wife is described as a crown of blessing (Prov. 12:4) to her husband, a source of great good to him, both body and soul. What a contrast!

One of the things I appreciate about the commands to wives is the way in which they are expressed. Ephesians 5:33, says “Let the wife see that she respects her husband.” It doesn’t say, “Let the husband see that his wife respects him.” This is the duty of the wife and she is to check up on herself to see if she is doing it. And Christian women are not commanded to render respect to men in general. That would result in oppression. Rather, wives are to see that they are submissive to their own husbands, not someone else’s. What a relief that is!

Where respect is lacking, cultivate it. Begin by confessing the lack, and then express appreciating for something, anything. Cut out the bad and replace it with the good.

Wives are to render respect, submitting to their husband “as unto the Lord.” If it is difficult to respec the man you married, start by being civil. And when you are courteous and kind, offer it to God as a means of pleasing Him.